Away from the wholesome image projected by the marketing companies, bottled water contains a whole host of environmental and social problems. Lindsay Whalen goes to the source.
Extraction leads to water shortages, transporting it contributes
to climate change and disposing of the packaging releases toxic chemicals.
Add to that the extortionate price-tag and involvement of unethical multinationals
and seeds of doubt about the great bottled water scam may start to sprout.
Extracting it
Let’s start at the beginning. Bottling plants are responsible
for water shortages around the world.
In North America, problems have been
in Texas and the Great Lakes region, where farmers and fishers who are dependent
on water for their livelihoods are being affected.(1) Nestlé has
also been criticised for pumping water in a historic mineral water park
in São Lourenco, Brazil for its Pure Life brand.(2)
The company has
been blamed for ruining the healing springs which used to attract tourists
to the town.(2) Trees close to the borehole, where Nestlé pumps over
half a million litres a day, are reported to be dying.(2)
The town has been pursuing Nestlé through the courts for five years, and until this
is resolved Nestlé continues to pump.(2)
Transporting it
Once the pumping has occurred, the water must be transported
to the consumer. Transporting bottled water around in the UK is estimated
to produce around 33,200 tons of carbon dioxide emissions- this is equivalent
to the annual energy consumption of 6,000 homes.(4)
Vittel travels approximately
400 miles (645km), and Evian 460 miles (740km), to reach London from France.(5)
Scottish bottled waters like Deeside, Highland Spring and Strathmore are
travelling similar distances.
Waitrose and Fresh & Wild have been found
to stock water from Fiji that boasts that its source is ‘separated
by over 2,500 km of open Pacific from the nearest continent.’(5) That
means that this water is travelling about 10,000 miles to get to the UK!(5)
In stark contrast, transporting water through underground
pipes to household taps is environmentally benign, according to a new report
by the Earth Policy Index (EPI).(1)
Janet Larson, its director of research,
said: “Transporting water around the globe involves burning massive
quantities of fossil fuels and thus emitting greenhouse gases and other
pollutants into the atmosphere. This contrasts starkly with tap water, which
is distributed through an energy efficient infrastructure.”(1)
Disposing of it
It doesn’t get any better at the packaging end either.
Bottled water is normally packaged in PET, which is a crude oil derivative.
The EPI found that 2.7 million tons of plastic are used to bottle water
each year worldwide.(1)
Only about 10% of plastic bottles are currently
recycled in the UK.(4) The rest go to landfill where they take 450 years
to break down,(4) all this time releasing polluting gases into the environment.
Ethical Consumer magazine wrote to all of the companies asking
them about the recycled plastic content in their plastic bottles. Only Frank,
Harrogate Spa and Shannon Minerals gave clear answers, admitting they did
not use any recycled plastic in their bottles. The other companies did not
give straight answers, but it is likely they do not use recycled plastic
content either.
Britvic Soft Drinks, Coca-Cola and Nestlé are all members
of the Industry Council for Packaging and the Environment (INCPEN). This
‘research’ group is funded by industry and appears keen to condemn
every environmental initiative aimed at reducing packaging, unless it’s
beneficial to company profits.
INCPEN is currently engaged in counteracting
the Women’s Institute’s campaign which urged members to take unnecessary
packaging back to the supermarkets on the 20th June.(28)
Marketing hyper-drive
Even without the environmental problems, you have to wonder
why you’re paying a huge mark-up on something that’s colourless,
tasteless and odourless.
As an ex-chairmen of the Perrier Corporation once
stated: “It struck me that all you had to do is take the water out
of the ground and then sell it for more than the price of wine, milk, or,
for that matter, oil.”(29) In the UK, tap water is treated to ensure
that it’s safe to drink, and is subject to more safety regulations
than bottled.(1)
A plethora of recent evidence suggests that we can’t
tell the difference anyway. The Drinking Water Inspectorate (DWI) has found
that, if tap water has been chilled, most of us can’t taste the difference
between bottled and tap.(6)
Similarly, a panel of taste-testers for Health
Which? liked the tap water as much as the bottled waters.(6) The wine writer
Richard Ehrlich also liked tap water better in a blind tasting which included
Evian and Volvic.(4) He praised his winning glass of Thames Water as “so
pure and neutral it was almost sweet.”(4)
The picture of health imagery peddled by the companies also
doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.
For example, a connection between health
and the companies’ products is clearly implied in advertising slogans
such as: ‘the natural choice for the family’ (Buxton), ‘Pura
mind, pura body’ (Aqua-Pura) and ‘fuel your Volcanicity’
(Volvic).
Yet a study by the Consumers’ Association found that the
levels of minerals in the water were so low, that you’d have to drink
litres of the stuff to make a significant difference.(6) “The French
Senate even advises people who drink bottled mineral water to change brands
frequently because the added minerals are helpful in small amounts but may
be dangerous in higher doses.”(1)
The Consumers’ Association also
failed to find even one credible source for the oft-repeated ‘fact’
that you should drink eight glasses of water a day.(6)
Many of the brands on the table also had flavoured versions.
Buxton, Cool Water, Pennine Spring, Shape, Strathmore, Vittel and Volvic
were all found to contain flavouring in their so-called pure drinks.
Unethical multinationals
There are some pretty undesirable companies involved in the ‘pure’
water scam too. Nestlé’s Perrier brand of bottled water has
recently stopped sponsoring a long-running ‘Award for Comedy’
at the Edinburgh Fringe.
Comedians including Rob Newman, Emma Thompson,
Steve Coogan and Victoria Wood called for a boycott of the event in 2001
and the alternative Tap Water Awards were organised as a result. Boycott
supporters have organised demonstrations outside the Perrier event to highlight
Nestlé’s aggressive marketing of breastmilk substitutes in the
Third World.
Nestlé’s behaviour contravenes the International
Code of Marketing of Breastmilk Substitutes, and according to the United
Nations Children’s Fund one and a half million lives could be saved
every year by reversing the decline in breastfeeding.(8)
Another successful brand in the UK is Highland Spring, which proudly proclaims
that its water is drawn from a protected underground source in the northern
foothills of the Ochil Hills overlooking the Strathearn Valley in Perthshire,
Scotland. This heritage is also reflected in the tartan sashes on its bottles.
It is the only bottled water in the report to have organic status for its
catchment area. Yet the ultimate owner is the Al-Tajir family, based in
Dubai.(10) Mahdi al-Tajir, a former ambassador for the United Arab Emirates
to the UK, is estimated to be worth a total of £2.2 billion.(11) He
is said to have “metal trading, oil and gas interests and a large property
portfolio.”(11) These interests will have a high negative impact on
climate change.
Peckham Spring
Coca-Cola is also involved in the sector with the Malvern brand, but it
was its Dasani brand that hit the headlines in 2004. Coca-Cola’s new
‘pure’ bottled water was exposed as tap water, leading some to
draw parallels with Delboy’s Peckham Spring.
In the BBC serial ‘Only
Fools and Horses,’ the intrepid entrepreneur sold tap water from Peckham
to unsuspecting consumers as ‘Peckham Spring’ for a considerable
mark-up. In the real world, Coca-Cola really did try to market the reverse
osmosis used in many modest domestic water purification units as a “highly
sophisticated purification process” based on Nasa spacecraft technology.(9)
The brand is still successful in the US, but lost all credibility and was
pulled from the shelves in the UK.
Access to water
It is worth remembering that whilst businessmen are making their fortunes
out of bottled water, 1.1 billion people across the world do not have access
to clean water, and 6,000 children die every day from water-related diseases.
Rich nations have committed themselves to the Millennium Development Goal
of halving the number of people without access to water by 2015, but it
is unlikely that this target will be met. The World Development Movement
is campaigning for the role of the public sector in achieving this goal
to be recognised.
It wants the government to stop promoting water privatisation,
and instead increase aid to water sectors in the Majority World, as well
as political and financial support to extend good practice within and amongst
public water utilities.(12) See issue 99 for a feature on water privatisation.
Recycle and reuse
In light of all the evidence, avoiding buying bottled water is a good choice, especially if plastic recycling facilities are not available where you live.
Aquaid, Clear Water, Harrogate Spa, Highland Spring and Perrier offer water in glass bottles which sidesteps these issues as glass is easily recyclable. Re-filling a bottle with chilled tap water and carrying it around in your bag saves purchasing lots of bottles that need to be recycled. Water for Health Alliance, a loose affiliation of water companies and public health charities is campaigning for water fountains to provide free drinking water in public spaces.(30)
This was, after all, the norm in Victorian England, and continues to be so in the US, Canada and parts of Europe.
Links
- Environmental Justice Foundation is dedicated to protecting
the natural environment, and its 'White Gold- the true cost of cotton'
report can be downloaded from www.ejfoundation.org
or Tel: 020 7359 0440
- Waste Watch's website (www.wastewatch.org.uk)
contains an A-Z search facility for details on recycling everything, or
give them a ring on 020 7549 0300
- WaterAid is a charity providing clean water solutions in the
Majority World. www.wateraid.org
or 020 7793 4500
- Women's Institute is campaigning on unnecessary packaging. www.womens-institute.co.uk
or 020 7371 9300
References
1 ‘Bottled Water: Pouring Resources Down the Drain,’ Earth
Policy Institute 02/06
2 ‘Nestlé’s bottled water
business exposed,’ Baby Milk Action 2006
3 ‘Eau, no: Clean,
healthy and pure? Hardly, Bottled water is killing the planet,’ The
Independent 12/2/06
4 ‘Environmental insanity’ to drink
bottled water when it tastes as good from the tap,’ The Independent
29/6/06
5 ‘Thirst for bottled water fuels food miles,’
The Food Commission 3/11/04
6 ‘Bottled Water, Fluid for Thought,’
Which? Extra 08/04
8 www.ibfan.org, viewed on 4/7/06
9 ‘Things
get worse with Coke,’ The Guardian 20/3/04
10 Highland Spring
press release 2005
11 The Times Online Rich List 2006
12 www.wdm.org.uk,viewed
on 4/7/06
13 Conversation with Belu representative 4/7/06
14
Cargill press release, www.cargill.com 1/2/05
15 Roots 05/03
16
‘Don’t be Fooled,’ Living Green 2003
17 Multinational
Monitor 08/03
18 ‘White Gold- the true cost of cotton,’
Environmental Justice Foundation 2005
19 Cargill press release, www.cargill.com
6/10/05
20 Feeling Blue Seeing Red: Boycotts 28/6/06
21 Colombia Solidarity Campaign 28/6/06
22 www.bigcampaign.org 27/6/06
23
jeboycottedanone.net 13/10/05
24 Save our Earth 7/2/06
25
Conversation with company representative 12/7/06
26 http://indiaresource.org
3/2/06 27 ECRA shop survey 06/06
28 www.womens-institute.org.uk,
viewed on 30/6/06
29 ‘Bottled water: Understanding a Social
Phenomenon,’ Ferrier,C. 04/01
30 ‘Think before you drink,’
The Guardian 13/7/06
31 Conversation with company representatives
18/7/06 32 Email from Save Our Earth 7/2/06